Some books are to be tasted, &c.

Scene: the library of Morpheus, in an aisle “where men and women stood leaning against the shelves, talking lightly to one another, and occasionally taking small bites out of the books they held in their hands”:

Steven Millhauser, From the Realm of Morpheus (1986).

Related reading
All OCA Steven Millhauser posts (Pinboard)

[Francis Bacon: “Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.”]

Little moments of Succession

[Caution: If you haven’t seen last night’s episode of Succession (season four, episode three), do not click through to the interview. If you do, you’ll be met with a major spoiler.]

From a New York Times interview with Brian Cox. The interviewer has asked Cox if he thinks there’s any goodness in his character Logan Roy:

Oh, yeah. I think there’s a lot of goodness to him. I think he’s very misunderstood. I think it’s just all gone horribly wrong. We have these little moments of — and they’re not dwelt on — the scars on the back, the story of the mother, the sister, the relationship with the brother.

Little moments, not dwelt on: to me, that’s the problem with Succession. The past that would make the present more interesting is never very much explored. (There was a bit more last night.) I’ll quote myself: “I think my general problem with Succession is that I keep expecting it to be more than it is.” But I’ll keep watching.

NYT, sheesh

From a New York Times article by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan about Donald Trump**’s lawyers:

His lawyers’ own foibles are seldom disqualifying, so long as they defend him in the manner he desires.

Foibles, do your job! But I doubt that these foibles have passed the bar. So just switch the parts:

So long as his lawyers defend him in the manner he desires, their foibles are seldom disqualifying.

Or more bluntly:

So long as his lawyers do what he wants, their foibles are seldom disqualifying.

Related reading
All OCA sheesh posts (Pinboard)

63rd Street Super Market

[6302 New Utrecht Avenue, Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much, much larger view.]

Just a super-sharp photograph of a corner market — a super market, not a supermarket. I like the barrels, the pushcarts, the handmade signage, and the prices on those signs: 2 for 15¢? Sold. The rear door looks as if it might be the entrance to another business. Maybe an laundry? Boom Town (dir. Jack Conway), once playing, or playing, or to be playing at the Endicott Theatre (7010 13th Avenue), was nationally released on August 30, 1940. You should really click through to see what I’m talking about.

In the 1920s this building housed a real-estate agency. In 1950 the super market was called the Weisberg & Schiffman Self-Service Market. It made the news that year in a robbery. There was a second robbery in 1951, a more unusual one:

[The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, January 21, 1951.]

Today 6302 houses the D & S Bakery to the front. To the rear, the El Shadai Hispano America grocery store, offering “Grocery Productos Hispanos.”

Related reading
More photographs from the NYC Municipal Archives (Pinboard)

[With details drawn from Brooklyn Newsstand and Google Maps.]

Benjamin Ferencz (1920–2023)

“In addition to convicting prominent Nazi war criminals, he crusaded for an international criminal court and for laws to end wars of aggression”: from the New York Times obituary. Benjamin Ferencz, the last surviving Nuremberg prosecutor, died on Friday at the age of 103.

Elaine and I watched a documentary about him tonight, Prosecuting Evil: The Extraordinary World of Ben Ferencz (dir. Barry Avrich, 2019). There’s an (extraordinary) episode of the podcast Criminal about Ferencz, “Palace of Justice,” first aired in 2018 and updated in 2021. And there’s a website, benferencz.org, with days’ worth of reading.

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper is by Matthew Sewell. It’s a tough one, and after missing the last two Stumpers by a square, I am inordinately self-satisfied to have gotten all the squares of this puzzle. I began with 6-D, three letters, “Choice word”; 8-D, three letters, “Title from Turkish for ‘lord’; and 14-A, ten letters, “Storming.” The northwest fell quickly; other parts of the puzzle fell more slowly; and the southwest for a long time seemed impossible to crack. 32-D, nine letters, “Querulous quote from Christie.” Agatha? Anna? Chris? Brinkley? I got it, but I had to look it up to understand.

Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:

12-D, nine letters, “Origamist’s purchase.” I learned somepin.

13-D, eight letters, “Pilot products.” A pretty arcane way to clue this answer. But I can think of more arcane.

15-D, eight letters, “Offering from GM’s Cruise.” Never heard of it.

17-A, ten letters, “Crimefighter who's really put together.” LTCOLUMBO comes up short.

26-D, seven letters, “Small fry.” Cute. And nothing to do with the Hoagy Carmichael–Frank Loesser song.

36-A, fifteen letters, “Study of capitalistic crises.” Whoa.

49-D, five letters, “It’s meant to be mixed up.” Only mildly confounding.

52-A, six letters, “Nautically named warehouse carts.” I still remember gondola from my housewares-department days.

54-A, six letters, “App store.” Stumper-y distortion — not a store to my mind.

62-A, ten letters, “Prudent antivirus setting.” Also prudent for security updates. But not prudent for system updates.

My favorite in this puzzle: 63-A, four letters, “Work (out).” I’ve loved the word ever since Betty Aberlin used it in a comment on an OCA post about a Mister Rogers opera. Lady Aberlin!

The answers are in the comments.

“Thank you for all,” &c.

I wrote an e-mail to my university’s president and board of trustees urging a fair offer to end the faculty strike. Contract negotiations ran for more than a year before the strike began. Negotiations resume today. I am sure my e-mail will be the tipping point.

In my message I made mention of a familiar bit of administrative language:

As a retired faculty member, I am long familiar with “Thank you for all you do.” Those words mean little or nothing to faculty who are underpaid.

This morning Google returns 2,360,000 results for thank you for all you do and thanks for all you do. The formulation is trite. It often functions as a hollow panacea: show ’em a little gratitude. In the real world, people express gratitude to particular persons, in specific circumstances. When I hear “Thank you for all you do,” I want to say “Oh yeah? Name one thing!”

A genuine way to express gratitude woukd be to pay people salaries commensurate with their ability and experience — or, at least, commensurate with the rate of inflation.

Another country

In the latest installment of Letters from an American, Heather Cox Richardson asks a pointed question:

The Supreme Court, Congress, and the Tennessee statehouse. What would you say if you saw today’s news coming from another country?

The dogcow

At 512 Pixels, Stephen Hackett presents the life and times of Clarus the dogcow.

[There is always more to the Mac than you know.]

Friends blogging, blogging friends

Fresca improved a paragraph by Adam Gopnik. Boy did she ever.

Slywy found an abandoned general store, and its history.